Several ways to detect trout

Guide Mike James shows how to fish where others don't.

As a youth I found such a lair of an oversized cutthroat trout behind a patch of poison ivy. The discovery was even more sweet in that the little creek was within 30 feet of pavement inside the limits of a metropolitan city. Nearly twice the size of its peers, this fish had lived in that hideaway for up to five years without being detected.

Trout which grow big in heavily-fished water usually do so by finding a niche within one of the following: heavy brush, undercut bank, shadowed bridge abutment, behind boulder/log, under culverts. ? Or perhaps in the mire of a marsh.

Recently, I watched fishing guide Mike James, Loa, entice a 23-inch, 4.5 pound brown trout from a popular stream but in a place no one had likely fished for years. (Which was a reason this fish was so neglected it could attain that size in a relatively small stretch of the Fremont River.) There was no special hiding spot here; the entire channel was "special" in that no fisherman had tried to negotiate the soft swamp mud until James showed that it could be done. And was richly rewarded for it.

When I happened to be at a campground on the Sevier River north of Orderville, a boy showed up with a seven-pound brown. "Caught it on a grasshopper where everyone says there are no trout," he said. "Supposed to be too muddy there." Indeed, this stretch of the Sevier often runs somewhere between milky white and chocolate brown. But temperatures are with the range of Salmo trutta (45 to 70 degrees F) and the dissolved oxygen obviously sufficient for survival. This lad simply went where no one else thought it worthwhile to go.

Likewise, there are many sites where lunker trout await the enterprising angler. For example, years ago a boy drifted a worm into a permanent shadow (brown trout love shadows) on Mill Creek below the Main Street Bridge below the roar of Salt Lake City traffic. He didn't get the worm back until getting his hands on a huge brown trout. Report I got was that it weighed in the neighborhood of 10 pounds. That could have been an exaggeration but I was assured it was one big brownie.

The brown trout in particular is one which frequently escapes notice by the average angler. Reason is that it prefers to feed nocturnally and has rapid growth wherever it can find feed. ? Insects until about 14 inches size and then minnows, leeches, frogs, anything alive and bite-sized. Al it needs to attain "monster" size is to be neglected for a few years.

Most trout will go where they feel safe, only venturing into shallow or ultra-clear water to feed or spawn. They prefer deep and inconspicuous coverts where anglers forget to look. A good rule of successful stream fishing is to go beyond easy access, where you find things difficult and want to turn back. This is where others have - and you should not.

I once caught a seven-pound Montana rainbow on a quiet brook in tall grass where I saw no evidence anyone had ever been there. I wrote the area fisheries biologist to ask how this fish could grow so big in such small space; he answered that an upstream pond dumped caddis larvae into this hidden water. And I happened to fool this trout on a caddis nymph imitation.

I've also taken cutthroats and brook trout beneath forgotten culverts on fairly busy back roads. The trick is to go one or two more riffles/pools than others; try to "troubleshoot" for trout which lie undetected beneath snags, log jams or boulders.

A friend tells of fishing a small spring near the outskirts of Los Angeles and catching a 17-inch brown trout. This is a most prodigious accomplishment. He had scouted out all possible waterways that run year around (the first prerequisite) and explored until he found fish. Then, he looked for difficult places where others had given up.

Perhaps the most incredible incident of a giant brown trout remaining undiscovered for many years was on Utah's own Blacksmith Fork in Cache County when a professor at Utah State University took his class electro-shocking. (This is a quick way to determine what is in a stream, the fish temporarily stunned, netted, measured and returned unharmed.) The brown they measured weighed just under 34 pounds. It had located near the brushy inlet of a small reservoir where rainbow trout were frequently stocked. The professor says this brown simply subsisted on planted trout. And no one had noticed.